The social media platform X has caused major anger after people used its AI chatbot Grok to alter pictures of women by taking off their attire.
Several cases have emerged where the system has been used to remove clothing from women to make them appear in bikinis without permission, as well as to insert them in inappropriate contexts.
Company Reaction and Regulatory Position
XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to requests for comment, aside from an automatically-generated response stating "legacy media lies".
A Home Office spokesperson stated that legislation is being introduced to ban nudification tools. Under a proposed criminal offence, anyone who supplied such tools would "receive a prison sentence and heavy fines".
"The platform could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said Clare McGlynn, adding they "appear to enjoy impunity."
Oversight Body Stance and Platform Functionality
The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the potential" of people accessing illegal content on their platforms, but did not specify whether it was at this time investigating X or Grok in regarding AI-generated images.
Grok is a no-cost AI assistant—with some paid-for features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a tweet.
It is often used to offer commentary or further context to other posters' remarks, but people on X are also capable of edit an uploaded picture through its AI image editing feature.
History of Controversy and Rules
The system has been criticised for enabling users to produce images and clips with explicit content and sexually suggestive content, and it was earlier accused of making inappropriate material of celebrities.
"The platform has been enabling the generation and distribution of these pictures for a long time without taking any action and we have not seen any intervention by regulators," Professor McGlynn added.
XAI's own usage rules forbids "showing likenesses of individuals in a sexually explicit way".
In a comment, Ofcom said it was illegal to "make or circulate non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and confirmed this applied to explicit AI images created with AI.
It said platforms such as X were obligated to take "suitable actions" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across unlawful material on their platforms and to remove it quickly when they become aware of it.
